Unprompted
adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Not prompted; not urged or instigated; spontaneous.
"The unprompted, rapid, and reliable emergence of hierarchical relationships within human social groups (Gruenfeld & Tiedens, 2010; Leavitt, 2005) means that differences in social status exist in perhaps all human social environments (Anderson & Kilduff, 2009; Gould, 2002; Ridgeway, 1991)."
- 1 proceeding from natural feeling or impulse without external stimulus wordnet
Example
More examples"Honestly, I think if Mary had admitted she knew damn well what she was doing, and was understandably guilty about that, I'd have more sympathy for her. Altruism and self-sacrifice are fine to talk about, but actually being willing to give up your life for someone else—which is probably what refusing to rat people out to the bad guys would have come to, for her—is a pretty tall order. Not everyone is that brave, and being forced into a position where she had to choose between her own life and the lives of the people around her was a miserable and unfair position the villains are responsible for putting her in. She didn't do it unprompted."
Etymology
From un- + prompted.
More for "unprompted"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.